Nathan Bedford Forrest - American Civil War - HISTORY.com Nathan Bedford Forrest A+E Networks Introduction Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) was a Confederate general during the Civil War (1861-65). Despite having no formal military training, Forrest rose from the rank of private to lieutenant general, serving as a cavalry officer at numerous engagements including the Battles of Shiloh, Chickamauga, Brice’s Crossroads and Second Franklin. Known for his maxim “get there first with the most men,” Forrest was relentless in harassing Union forces during the Vicksburg Campaign in 1862 and 1863, and conducted successful raiding operations on federal supplies and communication lines throughout the war. In addition to his ingenious cavalry tactics, Forrest is also remembered for his controversial involvement in the Battle of Fort Pillow in April 1864, when his troops massacred black soldiers following a Union surrender. After the Civil War Forrest worked as a planter and railroad president, and served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He died in 1877 at the age of 56.

Google Nathan Bedford Forrest: Early Life Nathan Bedford Forrest was born in Chapel Hill, Tennessee , on July 13, 1821. He grew up poor and received almost no formal education before going into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando, Mississippi . In 1845 his uncle was killed in a street fight started over a business dispute, and Forrest responded by killing two of the murderers using a pistol and bowie knife. Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery, a member of a prominent Tennessee family, that same year. The couple would later have two children. Did You Know? Known as the “Wizard of the Saddle” for his ingenious use of cavalry forces during the Civil War, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest rose from the rank of private to lieutenant general despite having no previous military training. Forrest eventually found success as a planter and owner of a stagecoach company. In 1852 he moved his young family to Memphis, Tennessee, where he amassed a small fortune working as a slave trader. His business continued to grow throughout the 1850s, and in 1858 he was elected a Memphis alderman.

By 1860 Forrest owned two cotton plantations and had established himself among the wealthiest men in Tennessee. Nathan Bedford Forrest: Civil War Service Following the start of the Civil War (1861-65), Forrest enlisted as a private in the Tennessee Mounted Rifles and helped equip the unit using his own money. He soon earned a promotion to lieutenant colonel and was placed in charge of raising and training his own battalion of 650 mounted troopers. Forrest would win his first engagement later that year, when he led a surprise attack on a complement of 500 Union troops near Sacramento, Kentucky . Forrest was next involved in heavy fighting at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862. Despite being cornered by Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant , Forrest refused to surrender along with General Simon Bolivar Buckner and the fort’s 12,000 other Confederates. Shortly before Grant claimed the fort, Forrest led roughly 700 cavalry past the Union siege lines and escaped to Nashville, where he coordinated evacuation efforts.

Forrest was heavily engaged at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 and commanded rearguard actions during the Confederate retreat into Mississippi. Already known for his daring, Forrest reportedly led a cavalry charge against Union skirmishers and singlehandedly engaged several troops despite sustaining a gunshot wound to the back. His legend would continue to grow after the battle, when he published a recruiting notice in a Memphis newspaper that included the line “Come on boys, if you want a heap of fun and to kill some Yankees.” Forrest’s injury would keep him away from the field until June 1862. A month later he led a raiding mission into Tennessee, where he captured a Union garrison at Murfreesboro. Promoted to brigadier general, Forrest next participated in cavalry operations near the vital Mississippi River hub at Vicksburg, Tennessee, which was under siege by Ulysses S. Grant. Throughout late 1862 and early 1863, Forrest’s cavalry relentlessly harassed Grant’s forces, frequently cutting off communication lines and raiding stores of supplies as far north as Kentucky.

Careful to never engage the superior Union numbers in outright combat, Forrest instead relied on guerilla tactics designed to frustrate and exhaust his pursuers. Forrest was engaged throughout early 1863 in operations near Fort Donelson and at the Battle of Thompson’s Station. In May 1863 he successfully cornered Union cavalry commanded by Colonel Abel Streight near Cedar Bluff, Alabama . Recognizing that Streight held a substantially larger force, Forrest led his troopers around the same hilltop multiple times in order to give the appearance of larger numbers. He then bluffed Streight into surrendering his 1,500 Union cavalry before revealing he had less than a third as many men. Forrest was prominent during the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, in which part of his cavalry dismounted and fought alongside infantrymen on the Confederate right flank. He was then instrumental in pursuing the retreating Union army. After the battle Forrest openly criticized General Braxton Bragg , who he believed had failed to capitalize on the Confederate victory. Frustrated with his commanding officer, Forrest requested a new assignment, and in October 1863 he was placed in independent command in Mississippi.

Promoted to major general in December 1863, Forrest fought a series of small engagements in Tennessee before defeating a much larger Union force at the Battle of Okolona in February 1864. Forrest’s most controversial action as a field commander would come in April 1864 at the Battle of Fort Pillow in Tennessee. After capturing the federal garrison by force, Forrest’s men reportedly killed over 200 Union soldiers, many of them black troops who had formerly been slaves. While Forrest and his men would claim the fort’s occupants had resisted, survivors of what became known as the “Fort Pillow Massacre” argued that Forrest’s men had ignored their surrender and murdered dozens of unarmed troops. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of War would later investigate the incident and agree that Forrest’s men had committed an unjust slaughter. His reputation stained by the events at Fort Pillow, Forrest went on to achieve a stunning victory in June 1864 at the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads. After leading nearly 8,500 Union troops on an exhausting chase, Forrest counterattacked with 3,500 men near Baldwyn, Mississippi, destroying the Union force and claiming valuable supplies and arms.

Forrest then suffered a defeat at the hands of William T. Sherman’s forces at the Battle of Tupelo in July 1864. He would respond with raids against Memphis and Johnsonville, Tennessee, before linking up with forces under General John Bell Hood in November 1864. Forrest participated in the Confederate defeat at the Second Battle of Franklin before suffering another loss at the Third Battle of Murfreesboro in December. After Hood’s beleaguered Army of Tennessee was routed at the Battle of Nashville , Forrest led rearguard operations during the retreat into Mississippi. Promoted to lieutenant general in February 1865, Forrest would oppose Union General James H. Wilson during his raid into the Deep South but was defeated at the Battle of Selma in April 1865. He then disbanded his weakened force in May 1865 following the surrender of the Confederacy’s major armies. Nathan Bedford Forrest: Later Life Forrest returned to Tennessee after the Civil War and entered private business. In the years following the conflict he would work as a lumber merchant, planter and president of the Selma, Marion and Memphis Railroad.

In the late 1860s Forrest began an association with the newly formed Ku Klux Klan , a secret society that terrorized blacks and opposed Reconstruction efforts. Forrest is believed to have served as the Klan’s first grand wizard upon its formation in 1866, though he would later deny any association with the group when called before the Joint Congressional Committee in 1871. Forrest’s financial situation later became desperate following the failure of his railroad business in 1874. Forced to sell off many of his assets, he spent his later years overseeing a prison labor camp near Memphis. He died in 1877 at the age of 56. Tags Nathan Bedford Forrest summary: Nathan Bedford Forrest was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, the eldest of twelve children. Forrest became a millionaire as a businessman, who owned several cotton plantations. He was also a slave owner and trader. Nathan Bedford Forrest In The Civil War Forrest volunteered as a private in the Confederate Army on June 14, 1861, but at the request of Tennessee’s governor, Isham G.

Harris, he raised and equipped an entire cavalry battalion at his own expense; the former private was made a lieutenant colonel. He would rise to command the cavalry corps in the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana and would end the war as a lieutenant general. Though he had no formal military training—indeed, he had only six months of formal education of any kind—he seemed to innately grasp battlefield tactics and the use of mounted troops to destablilize the enemy’s rear areas. Forrest earned the nickname “the wizard of the saddle” for his lightening raids, and his rear-area strikes became part of the basis for modern warfare strategies and tactics. He was among the most feared commanding officers of the Civil War —Union major general William Tecumseh Sherman once thundered, “that devil Forrest must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.” Much of his success was due to his force of will. His first combat occurred at Sacramento, Kentucky, in December 1861. In a skirmish with Federal cavalry, Forrest demonstrated the courage—or impetuosity—that would become his hallmark in battle, leading his men in a charge that disrupted his opponents and started a running fight.

In Februrary 1862, when the rest of the Confederate command surrendered at the Battle of Fort Donelson , Tennessee, Forrest escaped with most of his horsemen and a few men from other units. At the Battle of Shiloh , there was little opportunity for cavalry action, but he reportedly was among the commanders urging P.G.T. Beauregard to make a final assault in darkness against Ulysses S. Grant ‘s position above the river. When the Confederates were driven back the next day, Forrest had the rear guard position and, at Fallen Timbers, he ordered a cavalry charge—only to find himself alone among the enemy soldiers. Though seriously wounded, he managed to escape. In the summer that followed the April 1862 battle he began the raids that would bring him fame. During U.S. Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign , Forrest’s men attacked Union supply depots and disrupted Grant’s lines of communication. His career nearly ended at Parker’s Crossroads, Tennessee, on Dec. 31, 1862. While occupied in a skirmish with one group of Federal soldiers, he discovered more bluecoats coming up behind him.

He ordered his men to charge in both directions, a bold move that allowed them to escape. During the course of the war, several horses were shot out from under Forrest. One of them, Roderick, gained fame during the skirmish at Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, on March 5, 1863. After the horse suffered three wounds, Forrest dismounted and ordered him taken to the rear for treatment. According to a legend that grew up around the event, Roderick broke free and leaped three fences to return to Forrest’s side, where a fourth wound killed the gallant horse. The previous month, Forrest suffered one of his few defeats, at Dover, Tennessee, while serving under Major General Joseph Wheeler. Never one to hold his tongue about his superiors, he swore he’d never serve under Wheeler again. At the Battle of Chickamauga in North Georgia, in September 1863, Forrest’s horsemen were among the first to clash with the Federals of Major General William S. Rosecrans ‘ army, but the fight was primarily one of infantry and artillery. When a large portion of Rosecrans’ men routed from the field, Forrest pursued, rounding up hundreds of prisoners.

After a falling-out with his commander, General Braxton Bragg , over Bragg’s failure to rapidly pursue the broken enemy, Forrest was given independent command in Mississippi and was promoted to major general on December 4, 1863. The following spring, while raiding in Kentucky and Tennessee, he became a central figure in one of the most controversial episodes of the Civil War, at Fort Pillow , north of Memphis. Residents of West Tennessee had complained to Forrest about abuse by Union troops stationed at the fort. Those troops included the 13th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment and a few companies of the 6th Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. Local residents claimed some of the cavalry were Confederate deserters and that many of the United States Colored Troops in the fort were runaway slaves from the area. On April 12, 1864, Forrest invested the 557 men inside the fort with about 1,500 men of his command and demanded its surrender. His demands were refused. After several hours of fighting, the Confederates broke into the fort, and the controversy began.

Eyewitness accounts by Union survivors say many of the black soldiers and some whites were killed even after they surrendered, and some were burned alive in their quarters. Even some of the Confederates acknowledged a slaughter took place. Sergeant Achilles V. Clark wrote to his sisters, "The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. The white men fared but little better." Ever since the battle, controversy has surrounded the question of whether Forrest ordered the "massacre at Fort Pillow," as it became known, or rode in and stopped it. A Union Army surgeon, Dr. Charles Fitch of Iowa, wrote in an 1879 account that most of the killing took place at the bottom of the bluff, where many of the fort’s defenders had fled in an attempt to reach a Union gunboat in the Mississippi River, and could not have been seen by Forrest atop the bluff.

Sergeant Clark, the Confederate who wrote his sisters about the battle, said he and others tried to stop the slaughter but claimed Forrest ordered the Union soldiers to be "shot down like dogs." On the other hand, another Confederate, Samuel H. Caldwell, wrote to his wife, "if General forrest had not run between our men and (the) Yanks with his pistol and saber drawn not a man would have been spared." One speculation is that the mercurial, hot-tempered Forrest may originally have given a "show no quarter" order after the fort’s officers refused to surrender but then tried to stop the killing when he saw the battle was won. About 230 of the 550-plus Union troops were killed. Some 60 black troops and about 170 whites were taken prisoner. Forrest had the most seriously wounded, including 14 black soldiers, sent to the U.S. Navy steamer Silver Cloud. An inquiry by the U.S. Congress two weeks after the battle was inconclusive in its findings. The "massacre at Fort Pillow" had been firmly entrenched in the minds of Northerners, however, through news stories and artwork.

Forrest himself, in his initial report to his superior, Leonidas Polk, wrote that, "The river was dyed, with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners." His second report corrects and expands upon the casualty totals but omits any potentially inflammatory remarks like those in his first report. Forrest is quoted in a postwar interview with the Cincinnati Commercial, August 28, 1868, as saying, "When I entered the army I took forty-seven Negroes into the Army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. I told these boys that this war was about slavery, and if we lose, you will be made free. If we whip the fight and you stay with me you will be made free. Either way, you will be freed.

These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better confederates did not live." Nathan Bedford Forrest After The Civil War However, the image of Forrest as a butcher wantonly killing black troops at Fort Pillow was reinforced in the public mind by his post-war activities. He joined the Ku Klux Klan and reportedly became its first "Grand Wizard." Called to testify to Congress, he never admitted membership but only said he had heard about such an organization and its activities. Admitting membership during Reconstruction might have meant prison for him. Supporters attempting to improve his public image often claim he was not a member of the Klan, let alone its Grand Wizard, yet they also credit him with disbanding the group when he decided it had become too violent. The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire, a 1914 book written by Laura Martin Rose, a native of Tennessee and former president and historian of Mississippi’s United Daughters of the Confederacy, named Forrest the "Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire" and on pages 19–22 gives details on him joining the KKK in Room 10 of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, nearly a year after the group was organized at Pulaski, Tennessee.

Forrest died from diabetes in Memphis on October 29, 1877. Articles Featuring Nathan Bedford Forrest From History Net Magazines Featured Article Nathan Bedford Forrest Along line of Confederate cavalrymen interrupted the quiet tranquility of a Kentucky winter as they slowly rode north. Their horses picked their way across the frost-covered ground, crunching through semi-frozen puddles and pockets of deep mud. The first week of winter was hardly an ideal time for soldiering, but these inexperienced troopers were looking forward to their first real action of the Civil War. Riding at the head of the column’s main body was 40-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest. Tall and well-built, the Tennessee native had inherited the strength and vigor of his father, a blacksmith. Like the eager horsemen in his charge, Forrest itched for a fight. For three months his battalion had been conducting routine reconnaissance operations in Tennessee and Kentucky, and gathering up horses, cattle, hogs, and other supplies for the Confederate army. Such monotonous duty had its purpose, but Forrest expected to make his mark in a more direct and memorable way. Five months earlier, on July 10, 1861, Tennessee Governor Isham G.

Harris had plucked Forrest from the ranks of the Tennessee Mounted Rifles Company and offered him a command of his own. Forrest had enlisted as a private only a month before. Isham, who knew Forrest by his reputation as a businessman in Memphis, commissioned him a lieutenant colonel with the authority to recruit a battalion of mounted rangers. Forrest wasted no time. Before the end of July, he ran advertisements in the Memphis Avalanche and other newspapers. ‘I desire to enlist five hundred able-bodied men,’ Forrest wrote, ‘mounted and equipped with such arms as they can procure (shot-guns and pistols preferable), suitable to the service. Those who cannot entirely equip themselves will be furnished arms by the State.’ Forrest took this last promise to heart. Prior to the war he had amassed a sizable fortune through planting and slave dealing, and he paid for many of his battalion’s needs out of his own pocket. He quietly scoured neutral Kentucky for revolvers, shotguns, saddles, blankets, and other equipment, and sent his purchases south in wagons. In Louisville, six teenage volunteers helped Forrest smuggle supplies out of the city in coffee sacks.

A vigorous and powerfully built man, Forrest was his own best recruiting tool, inspiring would-be volunteers with confidence in his ability to lead them. Charles W. Button, one of the youths who assisted Forrest in Louisville, recalled his first meeting with the lieutenant colonel: ‘I was attending a military drill with a local company to which I belonged, and as I rode up home, dressed in my new uniform, I saw my father and a splendid-looking man in serious conversation in the front yard. I was introduced to Col. Forrest and told that he was recruiting soldiers, and, as I had already determined to go out, he wished me to go with him.’ After assisting Forrest in Kentucky, Button accompanied him back to Memphis as a recruit. By November, Forrest’s Tennessee Cavalry Battalion included roughly 790 men from Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and Texas. His recruits found him impressive in both stature and manner. ‘This command,’ Major David C. Kelley wrote, ‘found that it was his single will, impervious to argument, appeal, or threat, which was ever to be the governing impulse in their movements.

Everything necessary to supply their wants, to make them comfortable, he was quick to do, save to change his plans, to which everything had to bend. New men naturally grumbled, but when the work was done all were reconciled by the pride felt in the achievement.’ Forrest set up winter headquarters at Hopkinsville, in southwestern Kentucky, on December 20, lodging his troopers in floored tents as they contended with the cold and an outbreak of measles. The lieutenant colonel shared his winter quarters with his wife, Mary Ann, and their 15-year-old son, Willie. Recruits continued to trickle in. Just before Christmas, a Texan named Adam R. Johnson arrived in camp and offered Forrest his services as a scout. ‘I saw at once that he was a man of great and prompt decision,’ Johnson remembered. ‘His muscular, well-proportioned figure, over six feet in height, was indicative of extraordinary physical strength. But it struck me that his most wonderful feature was his piercing blue eye which flashed and changed so rapidly with every emotion that it was difficult to distinguish its true color.

He was a man to catch the look and hold the attention of the most casual observer, and as we gazed on each other I felt that he was a born leader and one that I would be willing to follow.’ As Johnson entered Forrest’s tent, the lieutenant colonel gave him a keen, searching look and asked, ‘Well, sir, what do you want?’ ‘I want to join the cavalry,’ replied Johnson. ‘I have plenty of room for you and many more besides,’ Forrest answered. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘I am from Texas,’ Johnson said, whereupon Forrest asked, ‘What have you been doing out there?’ ‘I have been surveying and fighting the Indians,’ the Texan answered. ‘Well, sir,’ said Forrest, ‘I should like to have you with me. One of my companies is from Texas, and you may go in with it if you wish.’ After making sure he would be allowed to serve as a scout, Johnson accepted Forrest’s offer. Johnson got his chance to do some scouting sooner than he might have expected.

On December 26, Brigadier General Charles Clark, commanding an independent brigade in Confederate Department Number 2, ordered Forrest’s battalion to reconnoiter toward Rochester and Greenville, about 30 miles to the northeast. The unit was to continue north toward Rumsey if it was practicable. ‘We were all lying in camp playing poker and writing love-letters, when suddenly ‘boots and saddles’ rang out on the quiet air,’ Private Charles W. Button remembered. ‘The sick recovered instantly.’ Johnson and fellow scout Robert M. Martin rode ahead of the expedition. ‘Now, Bob,’ Forrest instructed Martin, ‘I want you to start at once for Greenville. Johnson will go with you; and if you learn anything he can come back and report. I’ll not be very far behind you, and you’ll find me on the main road. Go into camp now, get your rations, and start right out.’ After the scouts had departed, Forrest’s command of about 250 men set out on the Greenville Road. The excited troopers did their best to ignore the bitter cold and freezing rain that intermittently swirled in the air.

Four miles out of Hopkinsville, Forrest turned east with a portion of his men to scout toward Rochester, and sent the balance of the force on to Greenville, under Kelley’s command. The two columns would link up in a day or two. Finding the Rochester area empty of Union troops, Forrest started back toward Greenville the next day. On the morning of December 28, a squad of about 40 Tennessee troopers under Lieutenant Colonel James W. Starnes and Captain William S. McLemore met Forrest’s column with news that they had tangled the previous day with Federal cavalry a few miles north at South Carrollton. Forrest pushed on to Greenville to join Kelley while his scouts rode north toward Rumsey to find the Yankee horsemen. Forrest reached Kelley’s camp outside Greenville shortly after the tired troopers there had fallen asleep after a long night of vigilance. ‘Colonel Forrest came in just as we got covered up,’ trooper Gray remembered. ‘We got up and saddled, mounted our horse, and took up our line of march over the same road we had picketed all night before.’ The Confederate force, about 300 strong with Starnes’ squad attached, quickly assumed the march in one long column.

Eight miles up the Rumsey road Johnson reported back to Forrest with news that 500 Federal troops had forded the Green River from Calhoun to Rumsey. Forrest called a halt and ordered all saddle girths to be tightened. ‘Now, boys, keep quiet,’ he said to his men. As word of the Yankees’ presence spread through the ranks, however, Forrest found it ‘impossible to repress jubilant and defiant shouts’ from the charged-up Rebels. Farther up the road, Button recalled,’several ladies, much excited, waved their handkerchiefs, and told us that the enemy were an hour ahead. Here we struck a trot and moved on as fast as our jaded horses could carry us.’ As Forrest approached the small village of Sacramento, an unabashed Confederate sympathizer named Molly Morehead confronted him, urging the Rebels to hurry. Pointing back toward a nearby hill where she had seen the Federals, she exclaimed, ‘There they are! Right over there!’ Forrest shouted, ‘Johnson, go and see right where they are.’ He remembered Morehead in his official report two days later.

‘A beautiful young lady,’ he wrote,’smiling, with untied tresses floating in the breeze, on horseback, met the column just before our advance guard came up with the rear of the enemy, infusing nerve into my arm and kindling knightly chivalry within my heart.’ Galloping to the crest of a nearby summit, Johnson spied a body of about 200 Federal horsemen a short distance away. He hurried back to tell Forrest, who ‘was trying to persuade the brave girl, who was riding by his side, to retire.’ Johnson assumed that Forrest would halt the strung-out Confederate column and order proper battle formations. ‘But this fiery leader,’ the scout later wrote, ‘without checking his charger, galloped on until he had reached the videttes, whom I had left on the hill-top to watch the enemy, now quite close to them.’ Forrest pressed forward on wet ground rendered treacherous by cold drizzle that had fallen for the last 24 hours. Picking up the pace, the Confederate advance force soon approached the Federal rear-guard. Surprised by the sudden movement, the Union soldiers appeared uncertain as to the Southerners’ identity. Forrest quickly dispelled their doubts.

‘Taking a Maynard rifle,’ he later reported, ‘I fired at them, when they rode off rapidly to their column.’ The Federals retreated over a hill and reformed. When the Confederates were within 200 yards of them, the Yankees opened fire. Forrest ordered the 150 riders who had kept pace with him to close within 80 yards of the enemy before shooting. After a quick flurry of shots, however, he realized that he had too few men to pursue the Federals, and he changed his strategy. Hoping to draw the enemy after him, he ordered his advance troops to fall back. The plan worked. The Yankee cavalrymen moved forward and were lining up for a charge when the rest of the Confederate horsemen rode up. Forrest immediately dismounted a number of men with Sharps carbines and Maynard rifles to act as sharpshooters. He ordered Starnes to move against the Federals’ left flank with 30 mounted men, and sent Kelley to flank the enemy’s right with another 60 riders. Meanwhile, the dismounted troopers, concealed behind trees, logs and fences, continued sniping at the Union horsemen.

With his saber raised, Forrest thundered to his main column, ‘Charge! Charge!’ and galloped full tilt toward the enemy. ‘Colonel Forrest spoke to the bugler,’ Private Gray remembered, ”Blow the charge, Isham.’ With that, we raised the yell and away we went. The ground had begun to thaw by this time, and we were soon covered with mud from head to foot. Our company was in the rear, and our boys began cursing the two companies ahead of us, whom we thought were riding too slow, and threatened to ride over them.’ The Confederates jumped into the fray with great enthusiasm. ‘…We started in at a gallop,’ Button remembered, ‘and soon passed a couple of prisoners captured by the advance-guard, one of them wounded and both bloody and muddy; a little farther on a loose horse, full rigged, and close by a bluecoat stuck in the mud; then several bluecoats in the same fix…. This was our first chance to ‘mix’ as Colonel Forrest used to say.’ Forrest dashed forward into the enemy’s center, as Starnes slammed into the Yankees’ left. Major Kelley held his squadron in compact order as he drove in the Federals’ right flank.

Starnes, having exhausted his revolver’s ammunition, hurled the empty weapon at one of the fleeing Northerners. The action was fierce, and Forrest was in the thick of it. ‘The Col. was about 50 yards ahead of us fighting for his life,’ Private James H. Hamner wrote. ‘I believe there was at least fifty shots fired at him in five minutes. One shot took effect in his horse’s head, but did not kill him. He killed 9 of the enemy.’ The Rebel horsemen, Johnson remembered, ‘led by this impetuous chieftain, swooped down upon their foes with such terrific yells and sturdy blows as might have them believe a whole army was on them, and turning tail, they fled in the wildest terror, a panic-stricken mass of men and horses, Forrest’s men mixed up with them, cutting and shooting right and left, and Forrest himself in his fury ignoring all command and always in the thickest of the melee.’ Forrest’s apparent ardor for battle astounded his men. ‘Forrest seemed in desperate mood and very much excited,’ Kelley wrote.

‘It was the first time I had seen the Colonel in the face of the enemy, and, when he rode up to me in the thick of the action, I could scarcely believe him to be the man I had known for several months. His face flushed till it bore a striking resemblance to a painted Indian warrior’s, and his eyes, usually mild in their expression, were blazing with the intense glare of a panther’s springing upon its prey. In fact, he looked as little like the Forrest of our mess-table as the storm of December resembles the quiet of June.’ Severely pressed in the center and on both flanks, the Federal party began a disorderly retreat. According to Union Brigadier General Thomas L. Crittenden, the flight began when’some dastard unknown shouted, ‘Retreat to Sacramento!” Most of the Federals chose to obey this mysterious ‘order’ over the entreaties of officers trying to organize a defense. The Confederates chased the Yankees to Sacramento, where, according to Forrest, his troopers ‘commenced a promiscuous saber slaughter of their rear, which was continued at almost full speed for 2 miles beyond the village, leaving their bleeding and wounded strewn along the whole route….

Those of my men whose horses were able to keep up found no difficulty in piercing through every one they came up with.’ Captain McLemore remembered, ‘It was the only time I ever saw a hand-to-hand contest with sabers.’ Standing in the stirrups, Forrest slashed to the left and right among the terror-stricken Federals. Johnson remembered his commander in action: ‘Finally he came up with a man who had been a blacksmith, as large as himself, muscular and powerful. While engaged in combat with this man, another Federal was in the act of running his sword into Forrest’s back, when a timely shot [from a fellow Confederate] felled his second antagonist. Forrest hewed the big man to the ground by a mighty stroke.’ In another instant, Forrest was fighting it out with three Yankees at once. Forrest quieted a private with a pistol shot just as two officers attacked him with their swords, ‘which,’ Johnson recounted, ‘he eluded by bending his supple body forward, their weapons only grazing his shoulder.

The impetus of his horse carrying him a few paces forward, he checked and drew him a little to one side and shot one of his antagonists as his horse galloped up, and thrust his saber into the other.’ Forrest’s wounded opponents refused to surrender, so the Confederate commander obligingly renewed the fight. He slashed Union Captain Albert G. Bacon, whom he had already shot, with his saber. He then charged Captain A. N. Davis, and their horses slammed together in a violent collision. Davis was thrown to the ground with a dislocated shoulder, and he surrendered. Moments later Forrest’s frightened mount bolted into the path of two riderless horses, colliding with them and hurling its rider to the ground in a heap. A bruised Forrest scrambled to his feet, but his horse was crippled. ‘Johnson, catch me a horse!’ the lieutenant colonel shouted to his scout. ‘Catching one that came plunging down the road,’ Johnson remembered, ‘I handed him the bridle, but the saddle did not suit him, and while he was getting his own saddle his men gradually withdrew from the pursuit.’ The Confederates had indeed given up the chase. Their horses were exhausted.

Forrest’s troopers spent the remainder of the day apprehending Union fugitives and gathering up the wounded and dead. Forrest put Federal losses at about 65 killed and 35 wounded or taken prisoner. General Crittenden estimated the Yankee losses at an unlikely total of 8 killed and perhaps 13 captured. Among the Confederates, there were two dead: Captain C.E. Merriwether had been shot twice in the head while riding beside Forrest, and Private William H. Terry had been pierced through the heart by a Union saber, even as Forrest tried to intervene. Three other privates had been wounded. One of Forrest’s wounded, recalled Private Hamner, ‘was from our company and was shot by one of our own men. The enemy had on the regular U.S. uniform overcoat, and the man on our side had been in the Mexican War and had on a coat like they had — blue. We were all mixed up together and one of our men took him for a Yankee.’ Forrest dealt kindly with one of the Federals he had unhorsed, a Greenville resident by the name of Williams.

The man was severely wounded, so Forrest had him carried carefully to his home, where he was placed on parole and entrusted to his wife. Passing through Greenville on a subsequent expedition, Forrest stopped in to inquire personally after the man. Williams’s wife and children displayed such genuine gratitude for his kindness that the lieutenant colonel was seen to wipe a tear from his eye as he emerged from their home. The first battle under Forrest’s command left Kelley with a vivid impression of his chief. ‘So fierce did his passion become that he was almost equally dangerous to friend or foe, and, as it seemed to some of us, he was too wildly excitable to be capable of judicious command. Later we became aware that excitement neither paralyzed nor mislead his magnificent military genius.’ The effect of Forrest’s leadership on his troopers was electric. ‘This battle had a splendid effect in our regiment,’ Private J.C. Blanton wrote, ‘causing men and officers to confide in and respect each other. We were convinced that evening that Forrest and Kelley were wise selections for our leaders.

And in all the battles that followed in which these two men were actors, they well sustained the reputation made on the field of Sacramento.’ Higher up the chain of command, Brigadier General Clark also took notice of Forrest. In transmitting the lieutenant colonel’s official report of the engagement, Clark added a postcript: ‘For the skill, courage, and energy displayed by Colonel Forrest he is entitled to the highest praise, and I take great pleasure in calling the attention of the general commanding and of the Government to his services. I am assured by officers and men that throughout the entire engagement he was conspicuous for the most daring courage; always in advance of his command. He was at one time engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with 4 of the enemy, 3 of whom he killed, dismounting and making a prisoner of the fourth.’ Forrest’s unforgettable debut on that cold winter day at Sacramento was a harbinger of ill fortune for his future Union opponents. The blacksmith’s son from Tennessee had only just begun to tap into a fervor for battle that few other men could match. Despite his lack of professional military training, Forrest rode roughshod over his Union foes throughout the Civil War, and rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

By then, Northern commanders such as Major General William T. Sherman remembered him simply as ‘that Devil Forrest.’ This article was written by William J. Stier and originally published in the December 1999 issue of Civil War Times Magazine. For more great articles, be sure to subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today! More Nathan Bedford Forrest Articles Emory Upton and the Shaping of the U.S. Army How one soldier’s combat experiences and study of the world's great military powers led to a tactical revolution Tennessee town memorializes Nathan B. Forrest’s horse In the annals of American history, no war has produced as many famous horses as the Civil War: Traveller, Little Sorrel and Rienzi are among the best known, but there are others. Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, rode several great mounts, including his loyal horse Roderick. At the March 1863 Battle of … The Angola Train Wreck Nearly 50 people died and many more injured in the 1867 train wreck known as the Angola Horror. John D. Rockefeller narrowly missed being one of them.

Nathan Bedford Forrest Nathan Bedford Forrest Tweet Nathan Bedford Forrest (Library of Congress) Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most polarizing figures of the Civil War era, was born July 13, 1821 in Chapel Hill, Tennessee – a small town on the Duck River. When his father, a blacksmith, died when he was 16, Forrest moved to the Memphis Delta and eventually became a successful businessman – indeed a millionaire – dealing in cotton, land and slaves. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest volunteered as a private before deciding to raise and equip an entire unit at his own expense. He was commissioned lieutenant colonel, and issued this call to arms in June, 1861: “I wish none but those who desire to be actively engaged. COME ON BOYS, IF YOU WANT A HEAP OF FUN AND TO KILL SOME YANKEES” In February 1862, Forrest’s unit was stationed at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant forced its surrender. Rather than accept Gen.

Buckner’s decision to capitulate, Forrest and his men slipped away, through the snow, and fought at the Battle of Shiloh less than two months later. That summer he began to make the kind of lightning raids that made him perhaps the single most feared cavalry commander of the entire war and earned him the nickname “the wizard of the saddle.” He was promoted to brigadier general and at the close of the year made himself a thorn in the side of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, disrupting his lines of communication and attacking his supply depots. During a skirmish at Parker’s Crossroads on New Year’s Eve, Forrest and his men were totally surprised when a Union force suddenly appeared in their rear and threatened to surround them. “Charge ‘em both ways,” Forrest famously ordered. They did, and were able to escape the trap and to fight another day. Constantly on the move, bold on the attack and swift in retreat, no Union commander was able to effectively come to grips with Forrest’s cavalry during the war. In September, they took part in the great battle of the Western Theater: Chickamauga . Forrest’s men pursued the retreating Union army into Chattanooga and took hundreds of prisoners.

In December, 1863 he was again promoted to major general. The following spring, in April 1864, Forrest and his men were involved in one of the most controversial episodes of the Civil War. After surrounding Fort Pillow, near Memphis, Forrest demanded the surrender of the garrison, which included 262 soldiers of the U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. When the Union forces refused, Forrest’s men easily overran the fort. Then, according to several eyewitness accounts, the Confederates, enraged by the sight of black men in Federal uniform, executed many of the colored troops after they had surrendered: an unambiguous war crime. Though accounts varied, the incident stands as one of the most gruesome of the Civil War era; “Remember Fort Pillow” became a rallying-cry for African-American soldiers throughout the Union Army. Later in the summer, Forrest won one of his greatest victories at Brice’s Cross Roads , defeating a force twice the size of his own. His legend was constantly growing. That year, Gen.

William Tecumseh Sherman declared: “that devil Forrest must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.” Forrest continued to torment the Union high command as the war entered its fourth year. In February, 1865 Forrest was again promoted, to lieutenant general, becoming the only man on either side to rise so far. When Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant in April, Forrest surrendered as well, declaring that, “any man who is in favor of a further prosecution of this war is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum.” Over the course of the conflict, Forrest had given as much as probably any man for the cause. He had had 29 horses shot from under him, killed or seriously wounded at least thirty enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, and had been himself wounded four times. After the war, Forrest is best known as having been a prominent figure in the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan, a group composed of mostly Confederate veterans committed to violent intimidation of blacks, northerners and republicans. He was “Grand Wizard” until he ordered the dissolution of the organization in 1869.

Forrest died of diabetes in Memphis on October 29, 1877. Want the Latest? Follow us on Twitter and Facebook: Ku Klux Klan - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Founding of the Ku Klux Klan A group including many former Confederate veterans founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee , in 1866. The first two words of the organization’s name supposedly derived from the Greek word “kyklos,” meaning circle. In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention and established what they called an “Invisible Empire of the South.” Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses. Did You Know? At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction , put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress.

After rejecting President Andrew Johnson’s relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts, and each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted “equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves and enacted universal male suffrage. Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South From 1867 onward, African-American participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction, as blacks won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both black and white) in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood. At least 10 percent of the black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed.

White Republicans (derided as “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags”) and black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks. By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members–often wearing masks and dressed in the organization’s signature long white robes and hoods–usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where blacks were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina , where in January 1871 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners. The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern whites, the organization’s membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers.

In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them. Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group’s actions, giving them tacit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. The act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. This expansion of federal authority–which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South–outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans.

From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again. Revival of the Ku Klux Klan In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia , inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama . The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South. Tags

Question: Nathan Bedford Forrest was the original leader of which American organisation?
Answer: THE KU KLUX KLAN